Václav Láska (mathematician)
# Václav Láska (mathematician)

Václav Láska (1862–1943) was a Czech astronomer, geophysicist, and mathematician. He was based mainly at Charles University, and was the founding director (1920-1933) of the State Institute of Geophysics, which later became the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

## Láska's empirical rule

This empirical rule is one way how to approximate the distance from an earthquake's epicenter. The rule is most fitting for distance in the range of 2 − 10 Mm (thousand km). The epicentral distance in thousands of km is roughly equal to the difference between arrival times of S and P waves in minutes minus 1.

